The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (37 page)
Read The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles Online
Authors: John Fowles
"Can you not wait till I
return? It is only ten more days."
"I shall return to bring
you back."
"But cannot Mr. Montague
come here?"
"Alas no, there are so many
papers. Besides, that is not my only purpose. I must inform your father
of what has happened."
She removed her hand from
his arm.
"But what is it to do with
him?"
"My dear child, it has everything
to do with him. He has entrusted you to my care. Such a grave alteration
in my prospects--"
"But you have still your
own income!"
"Well ... of course, yes,
I shall always be comfortably off. But there are other things. The title
..."
"I had forgotten that. Of
course. It's quite impossible that I should marry a mere commoner." She
glanced back at him with an appropriately sarcastic firmness.
"My sweet, be patient. These
things have to be said--you bring a great sum of money with you. Of course
our private affections are the paramount consideration. However, there
is a ... well, a legal and contractual side to matrimony which--"
"Fiddlesticks!"
"My dearest Tina ..."
"You know perfectly well
they would allow me to marry a Hottentot if I wanted."
"That may be so. But even
the most doting parents prefer to be informed--"
"How many rooms has the Belgravia
house?" "I have no idea." He hesitated, then added, "Twenty, I daresay."
"And you mentioned one day
that you had two and a half thousand a year. To which my dowry will bring--"
"Whether our changed circumstances
are still sufficient for comfort is not at issue."
"Very well. Suppose Papa
tells you you cannot have my hand. What then?"
"You choose to misunderstand.
I know my duty. One cannot be too scrupulous at such a juncture."
This exchange has taken place
without their daring to look at each other's faces. She dropped her head,
in a very plain and mutinous disagreement. He rose and stood behind her.
"It is no more than a formality.
But such formalities matter."
She stared obstinately down.
"I am weary of Lyme. I see
you less here than in town."
He smiled. "That is absurd."
"It seems less."
A sullen little line had
set about her mouth. She would not be mollified. He went and stood in front
of the fireplace, his arm on the mantelpiece, smiling down at her; but
it was a smile without humor, a mask. He did not like her when she was
willful; it contrasted too strongly with her elaborate clothes, all designed
to show a total inadequacy outside the domestic interior. The thin end
of the sensible clothes wedge had been inserted in society by the disgraceful
Mrs. Bloomer a decade and a half before the year of which I write; but
that early attempt at the trouser suit had been comprehensively defeated
by the crinoline--a small fact of considerable significance in our understanding
of the Victorians. They were offered sense; and chose a six-foot folly
unparalleled in the most folly-ridden of minor arts.
However, in the silence that
followed Charles was not meditating on the idiocy of high fashion, but
on how to leave without more to-do. Fortunately for him Tina had at the
same time been reflecting on her position: it was after all rather maidservantish
(Aunt Tranter had explained why Mary was not able to answer the waking
bell) to make such a fuss about a brief absence. Besides, male vanity lay
in being obeyed; female, in using obedience to have the ultimate victory.
A time would come when Charles should be made to pay for his cruelty. Her
little smile up at him was repentant.
"You will write every day?"
He reached down and touched
her cheek. "I promise."
"And return as soon as you
can?"
"Just as soon as I can expedite
matters with Montague."
"I shall write to Papa with
strict orders to send you straight back."
Charles seized his opportunity.
"And I shall bear the letter, if you write it at once. I leave in an hour."
She stood then and held out her hands. She wished to be kissed. He could
not bring himself to kiss her on the mouth. So he grasped her shoulders
and lightly embraced her on both temples. He then made to go. But for some
odd reason he stopped. Ernestina stared demurely and meekly in front of
her--at his dark blue cravat with its pearl pin. Why Charles could not
get away was not immediately apparent; in fact two hands were hooded firmly
in his lower waistcoat pockets. He understood the price of his release,
and paid it. No worlds fell, no inner roar, no darkness shrouded eyes and
ears, as he stood pressing his lips upon hers for several seconds. But
Ernestina was very prettily dressed; a vision, perhaps more a tactile impression,
of a tender little white body entered Charles's mind. Her head turned against
his shoulder, she nestled against him; and as he patted and stroked and
murmured a few foolish words, he found himself most suddenly embarrassed.
There was a distinct stir in his loins. There had always been Ernestina's
humor, her odd little piques and whims of emotion, a promise of certain
buried wildnesses ... a willingness to learn perversity, one day to bite
timidly but deliciously on forbidden fruit. What Charles unconsciously
felt was perhaps no more than the ageless attraction of shallow-minded
women: that one may make of them what one wants. What he felt consciously
was a sense of pollution: to feel carnal desire now, when he had touched
another woman's lips that morning!
He kissed Ernestina rather
hastily on the crown of her head, gently disengaged her ringers from their
holds, kissed them in turn, then left.
He still had an ordeal, since
Mary was standing by the door with his hat and gloves. Her eyes were down,
but her cheeks were red. He glanced back at the closed door of the room
he had left as he drew on his gloves.
"Sam has explained the circumstances
of this morning?"
"Yes, sir."
"You ... understand?"
"Yes, sir."
He took off a glove again
and felt in his waistcoat pocket. Mary did not take a step back, though
she lowered her head still further.
"Oh sir, I doan' want that."
But she already had it. A
moment later she had closed the door on Charles. Very slowly she opened
her small--and I'm afraid, rather red--hand and stared at the small golden
coin in its palm. Then she put it between her white teeth and bit it, as
she had always seen her father do, to make sure it was not brass; not that
she could tell one from the other by bite, but biting somehow proved it
was gold; just as being on the Undercliff proved it was sin.
What can an innocent country
virgin know of sin? The question requires an answer. Meanwhile, Charles
can get up to London on his own.
35
In you resides my
single power.
Of sweet continuance here.
--
Hardy, "Her Immortality"
At the infirmaryWhat are we faced with in the
many girls of 14 years of age, and even girls of 13, up to 17 years of
age, have been brought in pregnant to be confined here. The girls have
acknowledged that their ruin has taken place ... in going or returning
from their (agricultural) work. Girls and boys of this age go five, six,
or seven miles to work, walking in droves along the roads and by-lanes.
I have myself witnessed gross indecencies between boys and girls of 14
to 16 years of age. I saw once a young girl insulted by some five or six
boys on the roadside. Other older persons were about 20 or 30 yards off,
but they took no notice. The girl was calling out, which caused me to stop.
I have also seen boys bathing in the brooks, and girls between 13 and 19
looking on from the bank.
--
Children's Employment
Commission Report (1867)
nineteenth century? An age where woman was sacred; and where you could
buy a thirteen-year-old girl for a few pounds--a few shillings, if you
wanted her for only an hour or two. Where more churches were built than
in the whole previous history of the country; and where one in sixty houses
in London was a brothel (the modern ratio would be nearer one in six thousand).
Where the sanctity of marriage (and chastity before marriage) was proclaimed
from every pulpit, in every newspaper editorial and public utterance; and
where never--or hardly ever-- have so many great public figures, from the
future king down, led scandalous private lives. Where the penal system
was progressively humanized; and flagellation so rife that a Frenchman
set out quite seriously to prove that the Marquis de Sade must have had
English ancestry. Where the female body had never been so hidden from view;
and where every sculptor was judged by his ability to carve naked women.
Where there is not a single novel, play or poem of literary distinction
that ever goes beyond the sensuality of a kiss, where Dr. Bowdler (the
date of whose death, 1825, reminds us that the Victorian ethos was in being
long before the strict threshold of the age) was widely considered a public
benefactor; and where the output of pornography has never been exceeded.
Where the excretory functions were never referred to; and where the sanitation
remained--the flushing lavatory came late in the age and remained a luxury
well up to 1900--so primitive that there can have been few houses, and
few streets, where one was not constantly reminded of them. Where it was
universally maintained that women do not have orgasms; and yet every prostitute
was taught to simulate them. Where there was an enormous progress and liberation
in every
and nothing but tyranny in the most personal and fundamental.
At first sight the answer
seems clear--it is the business of sublimation. The Victorians poured their
libido into those other fields; as if some genie of evolution, feeling
lazy, said to himself: We need some progress, so let us dam and divert
this one great canal and see what happens.
While conceding a partial
truth to the theory of sublimation, I sometimes wonder if this does not
lead us into the error of supposing the Victorians were not in fact highly
sexed. But they were quite as highly sexed as our own century--and, in
spite of the fact that we have sex thrown at us night and day (as the Victorians
had religion), far more preoccupied with it than we really are. They were
certainly preoccupied by love, and devoted far more of their arts to it
than we do ours. Nor can Malthus and the lack of birth-control appliances*
quite account for the fact that they bred like rabbits and worshiped fertility
far more ardently than we do. Nor does our century fall behind in the matter
of progress and liberalization; and yet we can hardly maintain that that
is because we have so much sublimated energy to spare. I have seen the
Naughty Nineties represented as a reaction to many decades of abstinence;
I believe it was merely the publication of what had hitherto been private,
and I suspect we are in reality dealing with a human constant: the difference
is a vocabulary, a degree of metaphor.
[* The first sheaths (of
sausage skin) were on sale in the late eighteenth century. Malthus, of
all people, condemned birth-control techniques as "improper," but agitation
for their use began in the 1820s. The first approach to a modern "sex manual"
was Dr. George Drysdale's somewhat obliquely entitled The Elements of Social
Science; or Physical, Sexual and Natural Religion, An Exposition of the
true Cause and only Cure of the Three Primary Evils: Poverty, Prostitution
and Celibacy. It appeared in 1854, and was widely read and translated.
Here is Drysdale's practical advice, with its telltale final parenthesis:
"Impregnation is avoided either by the withdrawal of the penis immediately
before ejaculation takes place (which is very frequently practiced by married
and unmarried men); by the use of the sheath (which is also very frequent,
but more so on the Continent than in this country); by the introduction
of a piece of sponge into the vagina . . . ; or by the injection of tepid
water into the vagina immediately after coition. "The first of these modes
is physically injurious, and is apt to produce nervous disorder and sexual
enfeeblement and congestion . . . The second, namely the sheath, dulls
the enjoyment, and frequently produces impotence in the man and disgust
in both parties, so that it also is injurious.
"These objections do not,
I believe, apply to the third, namely, the introduction of a sponge or
some other substance to guard the mouth of the womb. This could easily
be done by the woman, and would scarcely, it appears to me, interfere at
all in the sexual pleasures, nor have any prejudicial effect on the health
of either party. (Any preventive means, to be satisfactory, must be used
by the woman, as it spoils the passion and impulsiveness of the venereal
act, if the man has to think of them.)"]